Search engine bots are sometimes called spiders or crawlers, and they are computer programs that go out and search the internet for new content so that the search indexes are continually updated with the latest information.
What is a Search engine?
Have you ever thought about how a search engine works? Search engines are terrific tools in our modern society and the internet, as we know it today, would be very little help to us. Search engines allow us to find information on the web by indexing websites and putting the most important ones at the top. This way when you need to find important information, you can get to it almost instantly.
What ist a Search engine bot?
But the real question is, how do search engines work their magic and index all of the millions and millions of websites that are on the internet, many of which are updated regularly. How do these search engines always have the latest information available? They do it through what are known as search engine bots. Search engine bots, sometimes known as web crawlers or spiders, are automated computer programs that go out to the internet, follow links and map the whole thing, reporting that information back to the search engine itself. Then the index is updated with the latest information. These bots are working full-time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to make sure that you are getting the best information possible.
Google was the first real search engine, not only indexing the results that it found, but also creating an algorithm that ranked those results so that people could find the information that they were looking for. Google is now the most widely used search engine with more bots than you can possibly imagine sweeping the web every day all over the world. The bots sweep every website, making note of all of the text they find, but they cannot see images or use many navigational buttons.